College Sex

Last week, Tyler Cowen linked to some "Data from Wellesley; could be better, could be worse." Specifically it was a study of virginity rates by major. It put me in mind of my old days at The Harvard Independent and our annual sex survey where I found these factoids:

Most clearly, nerds have less fun as high GPA correlates with low levels of nookie. A piece of advice for undergraduates out there would be that no grade I ever received in any college course has ever had the slightest impact on my life. See more sexy data here and here.

Comments

How would you know if any grade you received had the slightest impact?

You graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, for chrissakes.

Posted by Seth | June 13, 2008 2:23 PM

Since you're taking requests, can we just request that you not blog about your sex life? Thanks.

Posted by the commentariat | June 13, 2008 2:26 PM

"no grade I ever received in any college course has ever had the slightest impact on my life."

Presumably the time you put into the Indy affected your journalistic career. For other people, it's grades and grad school.

Posted by Luc | June 13, 2008 2:34 PM

More to the point, grades don't matter much when you're coming from Harvard. If you're outside the top 10 or 20 schools, yes you need good grades, so get off the blogs and go study.

Posted by Christopher M | June 13, 2008 2:43 PM

Bill Clinton the best political sex scandal?

Shows what kind of students an institution like Harvard attracts. We state school graduates are well enough versed in history to know that Alexander Hamilton had the bestest sex scandal ever (although we're disappointed that in spite of her White House "hostess with the mostest" reputation, somehow there never was a sex scandal involving those young women that Jennie Tuttle Hobart would "invite" to White House "parties".

*

Anyway, speaking as a (hopefully recovered) "Nice Guy" and nerd (in college) who didn't get any, I wonder how the breakdown for high grade making students getting any is by sex?

Posted by DAS | June 13, 2008 2:54 PM

Why does it say that the "asexual" students are "confused" if they've had sex? I don't really care for poetry, but I've read poetry -- am I confused?

Posted by jaltcoh.blogspot.com | June 13, 2008 2:59 PM

"The gayest residence is the Freshman yard, followed by Adams House"

The Freshman yard is where all freshman live, so this rate is effectively an average for all Harvard students in their Freshman year. Interestingly, this number is higher than any of the numbers reported by any of the residential Houses (where the vast bulk of students live for their remaining undergraduate years). One would think, because of community clustering and sexuality formation during college, that certain among the upperclassman houses would have higher rates of gay identification. (Adams, by the way, is popularly seen by undergraduates as the most gay-friendly house)). It seems like the only way this squares is if freshman are more willing to identify as gay than their upperclassmen. Indication of a Harvard "closeting" effect?

Posted by TKS | June 13, 2008 3:08 PM

Grades from Harvard (and many other, though not all) Ivies don't tend to matter as much because of the appalling grade-flation.

You're much more likely to get the grade you deserve (i.e., a C, D, or worse) at an elite liberal arts institution (Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, etc.) than at their Ivy-equivalent.

Also, grades are important if you want to go to grad school.

Posted by Daniel Shays | June 13, 2008 3:14 PM

"no grade I ever received in any college course has ever had the slightest impact on my life."

I think we all know what Petey would say.

I believe the phrase would involve the worlds trust, bag, fund and scum, but not in that order.

Posted by Petey-imitator | June 13, 2008 3:16 PM

Which way does the causation run? In my experience, getting a lot of nookie interferes with the ability to study hard and get good grades.

Posted by blah | June 13, 2008 3:20 PM

In my experience, regular nookie from a long term SO/fiance/spouse removes dating distractions and provides a goad to study hard and get good grades.

Re: grades. What Seth said.

Posted by cmholm | June 13, 2008 3:38 PM

Clinton had the best sex scandal?! JFK nailed Marilyn freaking Monroe! Kids these days just don't know their history.

BTW - why are there handcuffs in this graphic? Just askin'...

Posted by Al | June 13, 2008 3:39 PM

My grades did matter and getting better grades almost certainly detracted from the quantity of sex that I enjoyed. But this may have just saved me from myself, b/c there was still plenty of sexing going on.

The trouble with nerds is not generally the grades they get, but the fact that they are nerds. There are always Fri or Sat nights available for partying and the occasional hook-up, regardless of your workload.

Posted by mpowell | June 13, 2008 3:57 PM

http://blogs.chron.com/blog9/ogre01.jpg

(Nerrrrrrrrrds!)

Posted by owenz | June 13, 2008 4:09 PM

College grades only matter if you fail the course, or if you're going to grad school. Employers never ask about your college grades. If I were hiring someone, I wouldn't either. Have some fun and get Cs, you'll be fine.

Posted by too many steves | June 13, 2008 4:13 PM

I have to agree with the causative chain cmholm --- getting some on a regular basis relaxed and focused me as I did not have to devote as much cognitive surplus to finding a girl who was brilliant and genius enough to figure out that sleeping with me was the best decision of her night, and this is coming from an alum of an even uglier and nerdier school than Harvard (CMU)...

Posted by fester | June 13, 2008 4:41 PM

Which way does the causation run? In my experience, getting a lot of nookie interferes with the ability to study hard and get good grades. - blah

In my experience one does not cause the other but rather "no nookie" and "high grades" have a common cause: the set of personality traits that enabled me to get high grades in college (although not in high school, in which high achievement requires a somewhat different skill set) also set me back in the dating world where those traits got me the "you're a Nice Guy[TM] and all, but I'm just not interested in you in 'that way'" treatment.

That's why I wonder if the "nerd"="no sex" correlation was gender specific. It seemed to me that the "Nice Gals"(TM) at my school were getting plenty of nookie, albeit from assholes -- they could just stand there, act nice and look pretty and get hit on, albeit hitters-on do tend to be more the obnoxious louts. OTOH (perhaps due to going to a relatively "working class" school where people stuck to traditional gender roles in dating), a guy had to ask a gal out in just the right way, which meant passive-aggressive Nice Guys(TM) like me didn't have much success. Of course the net result was that guys like me become entrenched in our Nice Guy(TM) sense of whiney entitlement (which made us all the less attractive): "why is that Nice Gal(TM) going out with that asshole when she could be going out with me? why do Nice Gals(TM) get some and not Nice Guys(TM) like me? people told me when I was a socially outcast nerd in HS that I would start getting some in college where my intelligence would be appreciated and people go for Nice Guys..."

From there you can either go two ways -- total misogyny or radical ultra-feminist (if you see how the real root of your inability to get any is the persistance of traditional gender roles): that's why you see so many (current) Nice Guys(TM) on anti-feminist sites and so many (former) Nice Guys(TM) on feminist sites. Of course, non-Nice Guys(TM), including the actual nice guys, are too busy getting some to be spending time on blogs ;)

Anyhoo, this is way off-topic, I know ...

... I didn't know my grad school cared about my grades. Med schools, yes ... but grad school? OTOH, my soon-to-be employer needed a copy of my transcript and I know the search committee looked at my grades ... but I'm being hired as an Assistant Professor so maybe it matters how well I actually did in the courses I'll be teaching?

It reminds me of Dave Barry's comment about tests in college: "The idea is, you memorize these things, then write them down in little exam books, then forget them. If you fail to forget them, you become a professor and have to stay in college for the rest of your life."

Posted by DAS | June 13, 2008 4:43 PM

Who's dissing on the Dudley Co-op girls? I could really be into some hot PSLM action.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | June 13, 2008 4:51 PM

Dear college students,

Please only listen to Matt if you never plan to go to grad school. If you do want to, say, get an MBA or go to law school, grades matter. There is a direct correlation between your grades and the quality of the grad school that will take you, unless your family is mega-rich. There is also a direct correlation between the quality of grad school and future earning potential

Signed,

A hiring manager at an investment bank

Posted by LCS | June 13, 2008 4:59 PM

Clinton had the best sex scandal?! JFK nailed Marilyn freaking Monroe!

And Harding reputedly died in the act, with a woman other than his wife. Cleveland's campaign against James G. Blaine was haunted by his illegitimate child--in the Victorian era, yet. Andrew Jackson's wife was accused of bigamy. Jefferson of course was credibly accused of sleeping with one of his slaves, who was also his dead wife's half-sister. And I'm not even going to get into the pre-presidential relationship between James Buchanan and Vice President Rufus King, a/k/a "Miss Nancy".

Posted by rea | June 13, 2008 5:03 PM

The comments about grade inflation and ivy league schools crack me up. See: Stuff White People Like:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/05/06/98-the-ivy-league/

Hilarious!

Posted by Clare | June 13, 2008 5:06 PM

I'm not surprised that 31% of Harvard Students are virgins, but I am surprised that they admit it.

Now, while I was a Harvard undergraduate, I personally admitted that I was a virgin on a survey administered by Wellesley students who felt the need to study us for some reason. I have never felt so honest before or since.

Posted by Robert Waldmann | June 13, 2008 5:26 PM

I personally admitted that I was a virgin on a survey administered by Wellesley students who felt the need to study us for some reason. - Robert Waldmann

Did any volunteer to help relieve you of your condition? ;)

Posted by DAS | June 13, 2008 5:48 PM

And Harding reputedly died in the act

This caused me to look up Harding in wikipedia, and while I see nothing about him dying in the saddle (maybe the poster was thinking of Nelson Rockefeller?), I did see that Harding and Kennedy are both the only two sitting Senators to be elected President and the only two Presidents to predecease their fathers (and, of course, they both died in office). This is scary news for Obama.

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 13, 2008 6:20 PM

Actually, I withdraw that last comment. Obama and McCain have both survived their fathers' deaths. So whoever wins, the curse is broken.

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 13, 2008 6:23 PM

"69% of Harvard students have had sex."

Well, that explains a lot - particularly about why this country is doomed.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 13, 2008 6:53 PM

To comment on Yglesias's last bit, I've never been a manager or in a position to hire anyone, but my wife has hired hundreds of people over the last 30 years and she says that she has NEVER looked at a transcript and would be aghast in an interview if someone mentioned their GPA.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 13, 2008 8:38 PM

Just have to say, I'm tickled by the irony that a throwaway post I wrote about the sex habits of Wellesley girls ended up getting linked to by Matt and the Atlantic.

I had always hoped that I'd end up in the Atlantic one day, but I never guessed that a piece entitled "Geek Girls Are Easy" and referred to the Wellesley "College Senate" bus was going to be my ticket to the promised land!

Posted by Chris Yeh | June 13, 2008 9:15 PM

Only 8% of Catholics have had sex? Preposterous, and throws the veracity of everything in this poster into doubt.

Posted by Patrick | June 13, 2008 9:45 PM

"The most attractive residence is Adams House"

And the award for world's tallest midget goes to Tiny.

Posted by Just Karl | June 13, 2008 9:55 PM

I went to another Ivy school, and our school band had this parody they did of the "Ten Thousand Men Of Harvard" song:

Ten thousand men of Harvard,
Nine thousand are queer.
Five hundred are bisexual,
The rest won't last a year.

I thought it was a fucking riot.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | June 13, 2008 10:56 PM

I have been in the past and currently am a graduate student. I also spent 20 years in the work force hiring part time and full time liberal arts and science graduates.

I would argue that lives aren't changed by GETTING grades, but they are changed by EARNING them. That is, what grade you received on your transcripts is less important than the work you put in and learning the material. Any interviewer worth their salt can separate a person who cruised easily to a possibly inflated A from someone who worked their ass off for a B. I'd hire the latter over the former in heartbeat.

That having been said grades are deal breakers for graduate school, scholarships, fellowships, some internships, and most entry level jobs if the work closely correlates with the work you did in class. Also for large corporations where resumes are first weeded by HR professionals who just check for keywords and easy disqualifiers or, worse, a company that scans resumes and does an OCR search for keywords.

The subject is quite a bit more complicated than Matt lets on, but he is mostly right. In his line of work grades probably aren't that important. But it is a bit disingenuous for someone who was Maga Cum Laude at Harvard to say so. (I assume he had to have at least decent grades to get in, no?)

I heard Warren Buffet, Donald Trump, and Bill Gates discuss the fact that money isn't everything. Thanks for the tips guys. I need to go earn minimum wage now, thanks.

Posted by Adolphus | June 13, 2008 11:18 PM

MoeLarryAndJesus:

"Ten thousand men of Harvard,
Nine thousand are queer.
Five hundred are bisexual,
The rest won't last a year."

Matt graduated with a degree.

'Nuff said.

Well, actually, I think Matt was part of the 0.7% of students who described themselves as asexual but have had sex, and were thus confused.

Would explain his lack of a position on Iran.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 13, 2008 11:44 PM

I suspect that the significance of the 4.0 statistic is that the longer you've been in college, the more likely you've gotten at least one A-, and therefore the less likely you are to have a 4.0. So the fact that people with a 4.0 are less likely to have had sex may just reflect the fact that freshmen, who've spent less time in college, are less likely to have had sex than people who've spent more time.

This is supported by he fact that the difference between the percentage of students with a sub 3.0 GPA who've had sex and the percentage of students overall who've had sex is quite small (72% vs. 69%). Taken together, I'm inclined to think that these data suggest that GPA is a poor predictor of whether or not you've had sex, except insofar as it's a predictor of how long you've been in college. That's my guess at least.

So trying to come up with explanations of why good grades are a predictor of less sex may amount to trying to explain a phenomenon that doesn't really exist.

Posted by Daniel | June 14, 2008 12:52 AM

A piece of advice for undergraduates out there would be that no grade I ever received in any college course has ever had the slightest impact on my life.

The good grades I got certainly helped me get into a good graduate school.

Posted by Swan | June 14, 2008 1:58 AM

Patrick wrote:

Only 8% of Catholics have had sex? Preposterous, and throws the veracity of everything in this poster into doubt.

Well, 8% of Harvard Catholics in college. If it had said 8% of all Catholics, then it would sound unrealistic.

Goody-two-shoes, upper-class nerds, and self-identifying Catholics are subsets of Catholics, obviously.

Posted by Swan | June 14, 2008 2:02 AM

Preposterous, and throws the veracity of everything in this poster into doubt.

It should. At least when I was there--around Matt's tenure--the Indy sex survey was so laughably unscientific as to be meaningless. The polling method at least one year involved trying to persuade students leaving the dining hall to scribble out a survey. I'd bet the result that year was a minuscule sample dominated by self-reporting and self-selection bias.

Posted by O. E. Parker | June 14, 2008 2:22 AM

As someone who graduated from Caltech with a whopping 2.3 GPA, my advice to undergraduates would be "learn early on when you need to drop a class."

Posted by Adam Villani | June 14, 2008 5:11 PM

Exactly, O.E. These surveys are only for the amusement of the students. Only 8 percent of Catholic students had sex? Ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah, and Catholic preists are celibate.

Posted by marc | June 14, 2008 8:28 PM